The Transatlantic Pursuit of a World Engineering Federation: For the Profession, the Nation, and International Peace, 1918–48

Abstract

In the aftermath of World War I, inspired by the work of Herbert Hoover and critical of traditional diplomacy, Czech and American engineers forged a transatlantic lobby for a World Engineering Federation (WEF). The WEF was to institutionalize technocratic internationalism, unify and elevate the power of the engineering profession, facilitate trade and economic progress across the Atlantic, and secure Czechoslovakia’s independent future in an internationally recognized East-Central Europe. By the mid-1930s, their technocratic internationalist outlook was reduced to a minority viewpoint, though the WEF lobby survived through international collegial ties. In the aftermath of World War II, and on the eve of the Cold War, French and Czechoslovak engineers sought once more to establish a WEF in Paris. However, when the European Federation of National Engineering Organizations (FEANI) was established in Brussels in 1951, its founders proclaimed an internationalist vision rooted only in Western Europe.